San Diego, CA September 10, 2011: Sending out resumes could actually be sabotaging your chances of getting hired, says a leading marketing expert.

Reached at his San Diego office leading marketing expert, Robert Imbriale believes that the time for the traditional resume has passed and it’s time for a more pro-active approach to finding a new job.

According to Imbriale, “Your resume alone is not a suitable document to convince a would-be employer to hire you. The resume is a secondary document that lets potential employers know where you’ve been and what you’ve done. But what employers really want to know is what you’ll do once they decide to invest in hiring you.”

Point well taken. He makes it clear that in order to get the interviews that lead to real jobs, you’ve got to write your cover letter so that it focuses on your most valuable skills and how they will benefit a potential employer’s business.

Most job seekers either skip the cover letter altogether, or use the exact same cover letter for every job they apply for, and this, claims Imbriale, “is a big mistake.”

Imbriale is not your typical employment coach. Instead he’s a veteran marketer who teaches business owners to see their marketing through the eyes of their customers. He insists that job seekers must also be able to see the job application process from the standpoint of the employer.

“Candidates for a job opening must be able to make the case to a potential employer that they are indeed a good investment,” he says. He’s a person that should know because he learned the hard way how to present himself as the right person for the job after sending more than 600 traditional resumes without securing a single interview in over 6 months during a time when he himself was unemployed.

“I thought I would be hired after sending out just 10 resumes,” he recalls thinking, but after 6 months and more than 600 resumes without a single interview, he knew there had to be a better way. Once he changed his approach, he received 3 job offers in a single week.

“Focus your cover letter on the value your skills, knowledge, and experience can and will bring to a potential employer instead of leaving it to the employer to decode your real value from your resume alone,” says Imbriale.

While some people say it’s a numbers game, Imbriale says it’s all in how you present yourself that determines how quickly you get hired. “Unfortunately,” he says, “most people have never been taught how to present themselves effectively.”

He says “that job seekers who follow this advice will dramatically shorten their time to becoming gainfully employed,” says Imbriale.

With competition at an all-time high for the few jobs that are available, job seekers need every advantage they can get. Could this be the answer that gets you out of the unemployment line and back to work? You be the judge.